DUH MOO OF BEING
June 22 2012
Between reading Proust, studying Italian and stumbling through a heat wave, I have no idea, really, what I think or feel or remember about the past week. We’ve just had our second Italian lesson and have come outside to sit on our loungers which seems like a ridiculous thing to do; we have just fried our brains on conjugation, along with definite and indefinite articles and now, as if enough damage has not been done, we are sitting semi-naked under a Tuscan sun the intensity of which has driven the thermometer to 90 + degrees and after a week of this has just about driven us into the mesmerizing desert of hallucination.
Are we mad dogs? Certainly one of us is English. Do we hope to incinerate what is left of our brains until the cells are ash and we are relieved of all human understanding, not to mention comprehension of a language with which we have been struggling for years? How can we know so many Italian words and still have so many left to learn? And why is it that when I don’t understanding something in Italian I suddenly understand nothing in English? And is this so bad?
I’m beginning to realize that if you really want to step out of your familiar life, with all its preposterous beliefs and thoughts, then there is nothing like throwing yourself into another language, especially if you are of a certain age where the hard-drive is already full. In order to make room for the new language you do have to throw out some things that may have been of use in your former life but which suddenly become clutter when, for instance, you try to tell your teacher, in Italian, that you have absolutely no idea what she just said or what you are supposed to do with it.
At first, these moments are somewhat frightening; to read or hear words that you are familiar with and yet have no idea how to apply them to the task at hand is, I think in any language, to experience the profound ‘duh’ of being. And if you really want to know, it gives me the giggles. I find it absurdly comforting to be reduced to nothing. After all, isn’t that what we all fear, being nothing? I, too, fear it, until it happens and then I find it a huge relief.
Joel, ever the one to maintain control of his thoughts, had the urge to do so the minute our teacher left. Instantly, he set to work organizing his exercise book and coming up with a list, which he so generously shared with me, as to all the things we ‘should’ do in order to become ‘A’ students. I gave him the bovine stare for a while, during which time I searched around for some remaining English words, ultimately forming the sentence, “I don’t want to do any of those things.” I think I may also have moo-ed, because he asked me quite kindly what would I like to do? To which I simply replied, “nothing.”
And what better place to do it than out here, hammered by heat, not 50 yards from 40 head of cattle whose only universal utterance is used sparingly yet with great authority, “Moo.”